Google is trying something new. It is going to track when and where people search for words that have something to do with the flu and see if the searches predict where the flu spreads.
The idea is that people will search for flu information when they start feeling poorly. A system that looks at search words having to do with the flu will pick up searches posed by others, too, such as hypochondriacs, students writing term papers or reporters writing stories.
The system,
Google says, could provide a faster picture of flu trends than traditional systems, such as those used by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Maybe.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The service, called Flu Trends (
www.google.org/flutrends), uses computers to crunch millions of Internet searches people make for keywords that might be related to the flu -- for instance "cough," or "fever." It displays the results on a map of the U.S. and shows a chart of changes in flu activity around the country. The data is meaningful because the Google arm that created Flu Trends found a strong correlation between the number of Internet searches related to the flu and the number of people reporting flu symptoms.
Google built the service with the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. government's public-health watchdog that runs a range of flu-surveillance systems. Flu Trends can be a complement to those tools, health officials say.
Learn more about
how to use Internet searches for flu surveillance.
